Using the word combination emotional robot is, according to our perceptions of robot behavior, an oxymoron. Usually they are portrayed and viewed as unemotional data-crunchers. Most of the robots currently being shown by AI (artificial intelligence) development labs feature calculated responsiveness. Personally I doubt that robots, as we know them today, can be truly emotional, since emotions spring from a subjective, conscious response to stimuli. There has to be a beating heart in there somewhere (vertebrates vs invertebrates). Check out the Wikipedia article "emotion in animals" for an illuminating discussion.
However, this all could change. Scientists are working to produce robots capable of self-generated artificial intelligence. Some thoughts on 'artificial' emotions can be found at the Nautilus site. Tested.com features an article title "Emotions Reconsidered: How Robots May Experience Feelings." J.Kevin O'Regan has posted online his talk given at CogSys 2010 and titled "How to build a robot that feels" in which he presents a feet-on-the-ground discussion of consciousness and perception.
Current technology is certainly intriguing -- meet Nao.
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The news has featured Actroids developed by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro Company Ltd. Actroid-F is shown below.
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Watching the video above, you get an idea of how much technological know-how it take to produce such a robot.
And, of course, there's Data from Star Trek Next Generation (Star Trek TNG, CBS Studios).
A bake fail in Second Life may seem trivial but it could be where we're headed in real life -- a point where what we know as real no longer resolves into what we see as real and vice versa.
The term being applied to this moment is technological singularity and it seems to be fast approaching:
The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is a theoretical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable.
Mathematician John von Neumann (1903-1957) may have said it best. He was the first to postulate singularity, calling it accelerating change. Stanislaw Ulam reports:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of
technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the
appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of
the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not
continue.
Ray Kurzweil -- author, inventor, futurist, a director of engineering at Google, and another supporter of the singularity theory -- wrote the book The Singularity Is Near, which is part fiction, part non-fiction. In it he interviews 20 big thinkers like Marvin Minsky.
So far the references have been artificial intelligence and software, but hardware is also fast approaching a point of singularity, as exhibited by Moore's Law.
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Benzirpi, Microprocessor Transistor Counts & Moore's Law, Wikipedia
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Concerns about society being overwhelmed by rampant artificial intelligence (think SkyNet) are being addressed by such organizations as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI).
The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened.
Which in turn reminds me of the old, old theory, jokingly made, that our world is only a molecule in a frying pan.
I tell 'em that this Country is bigger than Wall Street, and if
they don't believe it, I show 'em the map.
Seems to me, Republicans and Wall Street go hand in hand. For a zany alternate view of Republicanism, take a look a College Humor's video, "The Mad (Republican) Tea Party:"
So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in
the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product
that you can name that we haven't got more of it than any other country ever had
on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving. We'll hold the
distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went
to the poor house in an automobile. The potter's fields are lined with granaries
full of grain. Now if there ain't something cockeyed in an arrangement like that
then this microphone here in front of me is—well, it's a cuspidor, that's all.
BTW, there's a handsome book about Will Rogers, titled The Quotable Will Rogers, by Joseph H. Carter at Google Books. You can buy a copy if you like. -- Marge
For crafters and DIYers Christmas is fast approaching. Consider a gift with a message that's a simple (and inexpensive) project from CountryLiving -- a thimble necklace.
An inexpensive score at flea markets and on Etsy—usually less than $5—a vintage thimble can become a playful pendant in no time. Just use a small hammer and a two-penny nail to punch a tiny hole in the center of the thimble's top. Insert a flat head pin through the hole from the inside, so the pin's head remains inside the thimble. Twist the pin's exposed wire into a closed loop with needle-nose pliers, then use the pliers to attach a 6-mm jump ring to the loop.
So, what are you saying when you're giving someone a thimble? It depends on what background story you have in mind (and perhaps you should relay that info to the recipient). Some of the symbolic references are...
Peter Pan. When Wendy wanted to give Peter Pan a kiss he held out his hand, thinking he would receive a material thing. So she gave him the thimble she was wearing and called it a kiss.
During the Colonial period in America, all forms of jewelry were prohibited due to Puritanical restrictions and the apparent moral degradation of such jewelry items. Women were offered a thimble to symbolize the conjugal union, although it wasn’t uncommon for women to remove the top of the thimble to form a type of ring.
Dreams. (These references are a bit far-fetched, but interesting.) A number of sites that offer dream interpretations show ones for dreaming about a thimble. Every interpretation is different, so I'll just list the pages on the sites: Dream Moods, Dream Symbols, experience project.
If you decide you'd rather buy a thimble necklace or charm, there's a fine selection at Etsy.
-- Marge
In
his 1596 play, The Life and Death of King John, Shakespeare makes
reference to the thimble as a symbol of female domesticity - See more
at:
http://findingshakespeare.co.uk/shakespeares-world-in-100-objects-number-21-a-thimble#sthash.bYs7o8Y1.dpuf
Lately I've been working on learning animation with the intent of creating characters and a story -- there's a lot to learn. And since storyboarding can help a lot with story development, I'm looking at that too. Let me tell you, storyboard artists have a lot to consider when producing storyboards; just one area is camera techniques.
There are many types of animation. Check Wikipedia's animation article for some good information on 3D, 2D, computer, stop motion, and such. While looking at the "types of animation" results, I came across the term 'ragdoll physics' -- who can pass up checking out a term like that? But that's just one step in my trek.
Not sure who this Greg Williams guy is, I did a little searching. He used to work for the Tampa Tribune as a cartoonist. There's a Q&A featuring him at Mac Slocum's site. Among his latest projects is Twips. One of them is below.
Like winter in Game of Thrones, Black Friday is coming. Have you noticed that retailers are advertising Black Friday as if it's a cultural event? Or is it just my retail-phobia kicking in? Cartoonists have fun with the sales event every year; meme-makers add to the mix. Here are some new takes, or takes that seem new to me, on the topic.
I love the shifting, rainbow colors of CDs and DVDs. You can capture these effects in some of the projects below, all except the mixed media CD clock (it has a beauty of its own).
The mosaic tiles in the birdbath below are shards of an old CD. Debbie gives full instructions on her blog, me and my diy. She does a very thorough job. Seems to me this project could be adapted to a decorative platter by using an old plate. The direct link to her instructions is is the picture's caption.
Instructions for the disco ball below can be found at wikiHow. You may be saying, "sure...what do I do with a disco ball?" I can see a group of them in different sizes hanging by a window where they catch and reflect light.
Mixed media artist Cyndi gives instructions for making the CD clock below on her blog, Mixed Media Artist. Her site has a wealth of information for artists and do-it-yourselfers who like to work with found objects/materials.
Our returning veterans have a hard time adjusting to 'normal' daily life. Seems to me a large part of it is the loss of camaraderie and of the sense of purpose military service gives. Team Rubicon offers a renewed sense of purpose. A PBS article, Coming Home, links to a wealth of resources for the returning soldier, some of them governmental, some of them not.
The government shutdown may be over, but I'm still stinging from it. Seeing the Tea Party members of the US Congress gloat about having shutdown the government was pretty ugly. Who knew they would interpret their mission of less government as no government? Thing is, their extreme tactics are taking down the Republicans (who don't need any help alienating us ordinary folk) as well.
Here are some ideas about the Tea Party in the form of cartoons for you to consider.
Printmaking is messy business, but the results can be satisfying and visually arresting, depending on the paper and carving technique you use. All printmaking is indirect, meaning that you do the artwork on a piece of wood, linoleum, stone, metal plate, or such, then transfer it to paper. Best of all, you don't need a press to transfer the linoleum print (or a woodblock print), but can use the back of a spoon, a brayer, or press the block down on the paper. Throughout this post are samples of linoleum prints (aka linocuts).
When transferring your artwork to paper, it's important to use the right ink. If the ink is too thin or watery it will flow into the recesses of the design and transfer poorly, if at all. Speedball is an established and well-respected brand in printing supplies and gives some good information.
This proven phenomenon, now known as quantum entanglement, was called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein. He was very uncomfortable with the idea, as reported in the Nova video below (it's a little long but well worth the time):
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Einstein and Niels Bohr were often on opposite sides of a given theory. Thankfully, they made their disputes public in the Bohr-Einstein debates. Einstein's discomfort with quantum entanglement prompted him to publish a paper in collaboration with two other physicists, known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. In the paper they considered measurement of two entangled particles in light of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and concluded that quantum mechanics was incomplete since, in its formalism, there was no space for hidden parameters. As stated in the Wikipedia article:
According to EPR there were two possible explanations. Either there was
some interaction between the particles, even though they were
separated, or the information about the outcome of all possible
measurements was already present in both particles.
Years later, physicist John Stewart Bell presented a paper that essentially drew a line in the sand between quantum mechanics and classical theory. Bell's theorem states
No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics.
In this video, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku answers Matthew's question, "Could quantum entanglement be used to transmit information instantaneously between interplanetary spaceships?"
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For some background in quantum mechanics, take a look at this excellent piece.
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And for a simpler explanation of quantum entanglement, try this link to simple.wikipedia.org.
While we all joke about the snafu (military slang) that is Obamacare signup, it is an excellent example of how the Federal government works at present. This article at TIME Magazine offers an explanation of what was going on behind the scenes, "Traffic Didn’t Crash the Obamacare Site Alone. Bad Coding Did Too."
The site Outside the Beltway has an article titled "Is Government Inefficient?" with the cartoon shown below. Here is an observation from the article:
While some federal agencies have made good-faith attempts to become more efficient, most still carry the dead weight of unnecessary overhead, outmoded business processes, infrastructure that is no longer aligned to their mission, and underperforming organizational structures.
One of the current problems is that the Fed uses a lot of contractors (aka outsourcing) with little coordination and oversight. The article "Outsourced Government: Have We Gone Too Far?" discusses this. During the Clinton administration, also that of G.W. Bush, attempts was made to 'reinvent government' (Wikipedia), but they fell by the wayside, as analyzed in this lessons-learned paper. According to Wikipedia's NPR (National Partnership for Reinventing Government) article: "It was the eleventh federal reform effort in the 20th century."
